Meet the WIC Director - The final meeting with Lyn Konstant, WIC Director is scheduled for August 15 at 1:00 pm at the Northwest District Office in Independence. Local WIC agency administrators and/or WIC coordinators are invited to a ttend. Registration for this meeting is not necessary. The following topics will be discussed: answering questions with WIC data, 5-year WIC overview, National and State WIC priorities, funding and communication. If you have any quest ions or need directions to the meeting location, please contact Vicki Franklin at 573-751-6204 or via email Vicki.Franklin@health.mo.gov.

WIC Updates Move to the Web - The WIC program sends a WIC Update email weekly to all local WIC providers. Beginning the week of September 6, 2006, the weekly update will be posted to the WIC web page. A notice of the topics post ed that week will be placed in the Friday Facts along with the link to the WIC web page. All previous WIC Updates will be available on the web page. Readers will be able to conduct keyword searches; results will be in chronological order with the mos t recent information on the topic appearing first. This change will reduce the amount of email being sent to local agencies, make pertinent WIC information more widely available and eliminate firewall issues that the program frequently experiences. The Friday Facts will also be sent to all local WIC Providers. If you have any questions, please contact Carol Steinman at 573-751-6196 or via email carol.steinman@health.mo.gov.

HANDS Change for H225 BF Data - Since the implementation of the HANDS changes to improve the infant breastfeeding rates, there has been some concern about updating the H225 screen and still not being able to print checks for the parti cipants.

In order to determine if there is a problem with the HANDS system and that screen, please call Jan on the WIC HANDS help desk at 800-554-2544 or Melissa Seaver at 573-751-6489 with the details of the problems you are having.

On the H225 screen, if the "currently breastfeeding" field is marked with a Y, then the "if yes, how long" question must be updated (changed) before checks can be printed.

On the H225 screen, if the "currently breastfeeding" field is changed from a Y to an N, then the "if yes, how long" question must still be updated (changed) before checks can be printed. If the infant hasn't breastfed for a w hile and you are changing it to N, then ask the mom to give you an "estimate" of how long she breastfed and enter that data. It can be entered as weeks or months.

Please remember that there are older records out there that were never an issue before but are becoming an issue now with this change. Those records must be updated and cleaned up one at a time as they pick up checks.

Breastfeeding is a big part of WIC and we need to assure our data is accurate. If you have questions call Melissa Seaver at 573-751-6489 or email at melissa.seaver@health.mo.gov.

HANDS Screens changes effective immediately:
H208 Screen:
The H208 screen has been improved to allow only the agency in which the certification/recertification record resides to key, update, or delete information. Any agency can view the information keyed on the H209 inquiry screen but they cannot add, update, or remove any of the information.
Once a participant record is released and transferred to a different agency, the new agency can then key, update, or remove information. The H208 screen also now displays the participant name at the top of the screen.

H401/H402/H403 Screens:
The women's certification/recertification screens have been improved to allow any valid height, weight, and hemoglobin to be keyed. On these screens, there is no longer a low or high parameter for these fields.
0's and 9's will no longer be valid codes for any of these fields and will highlight as an error. 8's will still be valid as unknown values for all these fields and 7's will still be valid in the hemoglobin field for the second six-month breast feeding certification.

Additional screens will be improved in the near future. You will be notified as these changes are done in HANDS.

WIC literature that contains out-of-date information will no longer be available from the DHSS Warehouse. Please see the attached list of outdated educational materials. Included in the attachment is a list of acceptable literature that is available in the DHSS Warehouse that is more current and takes the place of the outdated materials.

There is a good supply of the following breastfeeding literature in the warehouse

These two brochures will be posted on the DHSS website in 1-2 weeks. The printed brochures will be available at the DHSS warehouse in two months. In the mean time, please feel free to make copies for your use. Please go to t he Department of Health and Senior Services website at http://www.health.mo.gov/warehouse/ to view additional literature that is available and for ordering procedures. If you have any questions, please contact Takako Tagami at 1-800-392-8209 or e-mail Takako.Tagami@health.mo.gov.

Lesson Plan Worksheet for LAP
The attached lesson plan worksheet may be used to prepare FFY07 individual, alternative and group nutrition education lesson plans. Local agencies may choose to prepare lesson plans using a different format, but all required information must be included to assure quality nutrition education plans. This form is also included in the FFY07 TAP. The entire TAP is available by request from Glenn Stud ebaker at glenn.studebaker@health.mo.gov.